Staff WriterViki Dos Santos spoke to the team behind German project Electric Lights Project, an initiative bringing women in electronic music to planetarium domes for immersive performances beneath the stars.
Run by Katja Ruge, a photographer, DJ, producer, and curator from Hamburg, Electric Lights Project brings together interdisciplinary art, photography, DJ sets, and live performances across three planetariums in Germany. The project is dedicated to highlighting women in electronic music, sharing their passions, stories, and the artistic visions behind their sound. Over the years, it has featured an impressive range of artists, from electronic pioneers such as Suzanne Ciani and Phew to contemporary innovators including Helena Hauff, Amelie Lens, and Paula Temple.
The project begins with Katja’s portrait photography of the featured artists, accompanied by a series of interviews with Kaput Mag, where we get to know the artists on a more personal level through their backgrounds, experiences, and creative journeys. Artists such as Aurora Halal, Afrodeutsche, and Marie Davidson bring their own distinct perspectives to the project, offering an insight into the people, influences, and ideas that shape their music.
The artists then perform beneath the vast domes of planetariums in Hamburg, Berlin’s Zeiss-Großplanetarium, and Bochum. As the universe unfolds above the audience, sound, image, and space merge into an immersive 360-degree experience, bringing together music, visual art, and science. Across its programme, the project moves between different sounds and approaches to electronic music, from the hypnotic, experimental sets of JakoJako and Anetha to the distinctive styles of Joyce Muniz, Paula Tape, and Chippy Nonstop.
Katja Ruge’s journey began in photography in Hamburg, where she photographed influential artists such as Björk, Beth Ditto, Peaches, Aphex Twin, and many more. Her experience within the music scene also extends to Manchester, where she lived and worked during the heyday of rave culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this time, she worked for Peter J. Walsh, best known for documenting the rise of acid house, the “Madchester” music scene, and 1990s club culture.
We had the chance to sit down with Katja and find out more about her journey, the inspiration behind Electric Lights Project, and the ideas driving this unique fusion of electronic music, art, and the cosmos.
What sparked the idea to create your own events, especially in such a unique location?
I’m a photographer, DJ and curator, and photography, music and club culture have always belonged together for me. Electric Lights began as a portrait project about women in electronic music. Inviting the women I’d photographed to share their music felt like a natural next step.
I’ve always been fascinated by the cosmos. I love analogue synthesisers and sometimes make music as part of Can Love Be Synth at the Synthesizerstudio Hamburg. Those sounds can take me straight into outer space. I wanted to bring that feeling into a series with women and myself as resident DJ. The portraits fill the entire dome at the beginning; then we play under the stars.
What motivates you to sustain the momentum on this project?
The response from the audience and the artists. People return, bring friends and sometimes travel from as far as Prague. They’re becoming curious about the series itself, including artists they might not already know.
Planetariums are science theatres, and there’s something spiritual about coming together in that circular space. In the middle is this wonderful Starball, recreating the night sky as you’d see it far from light pollution. At Bochum Planetarium, ESA astronauts have even trained to find their way around the stars. And we’re sitting underneath that same sky, sharing music and taking time to really listen and enjoy it together. That feeling of connection means a lot to me. It’s something I hope people take away from the evening, and it gives me so much back too.
I’ve already welcomed Helena Hauff, Lena Willikens, Cinthie, JakoJako, Akua, DJ MELL G, Nadia Struiwigh, Lady Starlight and Joyce Muniz for live or DJ sets. Some have developed completely new live sets or a whole musical story for the evening. They’re free to use the space however they want. I trust these incredible artists and love discovering where they take us.
The portrait photography keeps evolving too. Recently, Hamburg-based spatial design studio OBJ Studio reworked my Electric Lights photographs for an exhibition in Hamburg, presenting them on screens. I know these portraits so well, so discovering them through someone else’s artistry is such a gift.
As a woman in this industry, do you feel there are unspoken expectations or limitations placed on you?
Women have to explain themselves and prove their experience far too often. Working across several disciplines adds to that. For me, photographing an artist, contributing to a book about Joy Division and DJing at a planetarium all come from the same curiosity.
I’m 56 now and started Electric Lights at 53. I’d love to encourage women who think they’re too old to do their own thing. You’re not. Before this, I ran “Kann denn Liebe Synthie sein?” for ten years, putting on parties roughly every two months.
It can be exhausting. With Electric Lights, I do most of it myself, with Markus Schaefer (thespacebeween) supporting me with contracts and connections to the planetariums.
I trained in photographic lab work, and everything since has added to that foundation, including working with AI. Earlier this year, I curated the first edition of FEMC, a FLINTA electronic music conference at MOMEM in Frankfurt. Sharing experience and supporting others matters to me very deeply.
Has there been a moment so far in this journey that made you think, “This is why I do this”?
Recently, someone told me an evening had resonated with her own experience of losing her mother. My mum died two weeks after the first Electric Lights in October 2023. She was my biggest supporter, so the series will always be connected to her. Hearing that touched me deeply.
I wanted to create a feeling of sisterhood, and I feel it with the women who play. Playing in such a special space connects you in a different way. We already share a connection, and we just go deeper.
The people who come to the shows are just wonderful. After Lady Starlight’s live set and my DJ set in Berlin the other week, people wanted to tell us where the music had taken them. I share my playlists afterwards so they can find a track that meant something to them and take a little of the evening home. These conversations stay with me.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far working on this project?
To trust people’s curiosity and give things time to grow. The planetariums are intimate spaces with around 250 to 300 seats, and a seated audience can be incredibly open to intense, beautiful and experimental music. But you have to build that relationship. An event like this doesn’t happen just because you announce a date. There’s a lot of personal work and love behind it.
Where do you see Electric Lights going in the future?
We’re planning Hamburg with Anja Schneider in November, which is already sold out, and an ambient edition in Hamburg in March 2027 with Nadia Struiwigh.
I’d also love to bring the series to other planetariums that have the technical possibilities we need across Europe. For that, I’d need support from companies to help fund it. With venues this size, ticket sales alone can’t cover the costs of hotels, travel, promotion and such while keeping tickets affordable. I want people to be able to come.
Before that, my photography exhibition “To See the Beat. To Hear a Moment.” opens to the public on October 23 at MOMEM – Museum of Modern Electronic Music in Frankfurt. It brings together photographs from across the decades, including Aphex Twin, Björk and Peaches, alongside Warp Records artists, photos from the infamous Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg, where I took photographs over many years, and, of course, Electric Lights. Opening my archive has been quite something. I’m rediscovering photographs I barely remembered taking. Just yesterday, I found a really wonderful Aphex portrait, and it’s giving me lots of ideas for what comes next.